Concord teenager creates art as way to deal with bullying experience

By Tim Goodwin - Dec 31, 2013 | 0 comments

A fox playing music.

A scene from her comic series, Kuboro.

A couple of clay foxes.

Yai-Tzu Protector/Guardian.

Gittens-Jones works on a wire dragon.

Amaranthia Gittens-Jones works on a drawing of Amaterasu, the Goddess of the Sun, from the Japanese video game, Okami.

At a very young age, Amaranthia Gittens-Jones found a connection with art.

Not so much in the conventional sense of going to museums and looking at famous pieces, but more in producing original work. It started with drawing variations of Pokemon characters and has blossomed into something that must be seen to truly appreciate.

Gittens-Jones, now 14 years old, has grown into an artist that is starting to gain some notice around the region for someone who hasn’t even hit high school. Since October, Gittens-Jones has been showcasing her work at local venues. It began at the Oscar Foss Memorial Library in Barnstead and included the Chichester Public Library for the last month. She has also displayed a piece at the Kimball-Jenkins School of Art, where she is a student on scholarship and where the idea to show her work first took shape.

And starting Saturday, Gittens-Jones will have more than 25 pieces on display at the NHTI library through Jan. 31 as part of her exhibit, AmaSepiaChan Art Works.

“The message of the show is to be the story of your own life,” said Cheryl, Amaranthia’s mom.

While most artists begin with one medium and concentrate on it until there is a level of comfort, Gittens-Jones is not one of them. She is constantly trying new things and so far, Gittens-Jones has yet to find a discipline she is not good at.

“She’s a true artist,” said Keith, Amaranthia’s dad. “She’s doing things that you’d get trained for in college.”

She has worked with both acrylic and watercolors, colored pencils and markers, and inking and sculptures. Her most recent endeavor has centered around wire, masking tape and clay to create figurines like foxes and dragons. And don’t forget about her graphic art on her iPad.

“I’ll mix different things together. I’m always experimenting,” said Gittens-Jones.

Art has not only been her passion for many years, but also her escape. Having spent time in Japan as a young child, Gittens-Jones returned to the United States at the age of 8 and was almost immediately confronted with the difficulties of being bullied at school.

“If I felt stressed out, I would just draw a picture and it would make me feel better,” said Gittens-Jones.

The bullying went on for years and took on many different forms. It was both physical and psychological, and eventually Gittens-Jones just couldn’t take it any more. The stress of the environment at school was causing a change in her health.

“We had to psyche her up every day,” said Cheryl. “Even walking to the bus stop was hard.”

Her parents noticed things had changed with their daughter, but it wasn’t until last year that everything really came to light.

“I saw her health deteriorating,” said Cheryl.

Gittens-Jones needed some time off from school because of her illness and soon started to feel better. When she returned to school, the symptoms came back.

“We did not fully understand what was happening to our daughter,” said Cheryl. “We didn’t realize how it was affecting her.”

By May of last year, the family decided it would be best if their daughter sought her education in another way.

“Sometimes I just didn’t want to go, but I forced myself because I was focused on my academics,” said Gittens-Jones. “But after a while, I just said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ ”

In August, Gittens-Jones was enrolled in the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School, an online based home school program.

After multiple trips to the doctor, it was determined that Gittens-Jones had an autoimmune disease that was depleting her stress hormone, cortisol. But now things are looking up. She is on a hormone-replenishing regimen through the use of daily herbal capsules, and the art exhibits are helping with her self-confidence.

Gittens-Jones used her experience with bullying to create a presentation called, “Do You Know Who I Am?” Using her art and writing, Gittens-Jones’s project is a five-plus minute video against bullying by promoting who she was. The iPad presentation will also be a part of her work at NHTI.

“She just told the story of her journey,” said Cheryl. “‘Do You Know Who I Am’ became a central part of her healing.”

Her work in the exhibit spans many different mediums and is a representation of her persity as an artist. But what is included in the show is just a snippet of her talents.

When her family lived in Japan, Gittens-Jones became very interested in manga, comics created in Japan, and Japanese anime. Much of the credit goes to Keith, who introduced his daughter to comics, and over the last few years, Gittens-Jones has developed two series, Kuboro and the Legend of Shintaro, which is based on her own experiences.

“I realized months and months later that I took what I went through and put it into him,” said Gittens-Jones of Shintaro.

Art has always been a way for Gittens-Jones to express herself. And when the bullying got to be too much, she used it as her salvation.

“She’s constantly developing art all the time,” said Keith.

She has no idea where her artistic abilities will take her, but for now she is content with working on it every day and showcasing as much of it as she can. Gittens-Jones has also donated proceeds from her art sales to help various charities.

Gittens-Jones could have let the bullying get her down, but instead she found a positive way to use her experiences to try and help others get through it. And if she can help just one other child, then all her hard work will be worth it.

“I wanted to take something bad that happened and turn it into something good,” said Gittens-Jones.